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In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to take a look at how the letter
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A is pronounced.
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This video highlights some of the work I've done on my Sound Chart on my website. I often
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get emails from people asking questions like, why is the CH in Chicago pronounced differently
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than the CH in choice. And my answer is always, unfortunately, the letters in English do not
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correspond one-on-one with the sounds of English. To know exactly how a word is pronounced,
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you have to look up the International Phonetic Alphabet transcription of the word. Today
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we're going to look at the letter A and all the different sounds it can represent.
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In the word 'exact', it's the AA sound, exact. In the word 'father', it's the AH sound. Father.
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In the word 'about', it's the schwa, the UH sound. About. In the word fall, it's the AW
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sound. Fall. In the word 'able', it's the AY diphthong. Able. In the word 'share', it's
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the EH sound. Share. In the word 'private', it's the IH vowel. Private.
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So, when you see the letter A, you can't necessarily make assumptions about how that letter is
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pronounced. It's always best to look it up in a dictionary. Or, better yet, listen with
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your ears open as you hear native speakers. Make note of how they pronounce particular
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words.
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That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.
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Don't stop there. Have fun with my real-life English videos. Or get more comfortable with
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the IPA in this play list. Learn about the online courses I offer, or check out my latest
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video.
